Sociocultural and environmental influence on self and social processing and mental health in adolescence in the UK and Spain

青春期被认为是一个社会重新定位的时期，在这个时期，人们开始探索新的社会环境，扩大他们与同龄人的关系，减少与父母在一起的时间（Larson等人，1996年）。随着青少年能够更好地理解其他人的精神状态（Dumontheil等人，2010），他们变得更关心别人对他们的看法，更有可能利用这些判断来告知他们对自己的看法（货车der Aar，2018）。同时，许多心理健康问题在青春期开始（Viner等人，2012），这可能部分与这一时期发生的自我和社会认知过程的变化有关（Choudhury，2010）。有人提出，青春期是社会文化加工的敏感时期（米尔斯和布雷克莫尔，2014），因此社会，文化和环境背景因素可能在自我和社会认知加工的成熟中发挥重要作用，这反过来可能成为青春期发病的精神疾病的风险或恢复力的来源。这个多学科博士将整合实验任务，问卷调查和方法，以表征环境特定因素，在英国新的青少年样本和来自英国和西班牙队列的现有纵向队列数据，以调查问题：社会文化和环境因素如何影响英国和西班牙青少年的核心自我评价，这些风险来源和对青春期心理健康结果的适应力如何？英国行为研究。本研究将探讨社会凝聚力（如社会接触和邻里指标的劣势）是如何与自我和社会处理的变化，以及这些可能是心理健康结果的弹性来源。我们将在英国招募约300名11至18岁的参与者，并将使用经过验证的问卷和任务来测量：同伴关系和与家庭的联系，各种心理健康结果，核心自我评价，自我意识和自我概念以及观点采择能力。我们还将包括客观的社会人口统计指标（如多重残疾指数; IMD）以及主观指标（如感知的相对社会经济地位），并通过将参与者的邮政编码与政府区域级数据相关联来获得绿地、空气和噪音污染的指标。我们将研究环境和社会人口因素与整个青春期心理健康相关结果的发展之间的关系，以及这些因素如何受到心理社会因素的调节。我们将采用西班牙INMA和英国理解社会队列研究，探讨如何贫困人口的措施，包括父母的教育和地区水平的剥夺措施，以及具体的环境因素，如可用性和使用的绿色空间，预测心理健康的结果。我们还将研究社会支持和关系的影响，并在两种文化中进行比较。混合效应模型将研究社会文化和环境因素如何预测心理健康问题，以及这种关系如何通过社会认知处理的差异来调节。我们预测，不利的客观和主观指标将对心理健康产生不利影响，并将有一个保护作用的社会关系在这种影响。这可能是由于韧性与更有延展性和积极的核心自我概念有关，这些概念可能由强大的社会关系以及更好的观点采择能力引起。我们还预测，可能有一个保护作用的同龄人和家庭的支持，在这种关系中，特别是在文化中，强调青少年的发展在家庭结构（例如西班牙）。

Adolescence is considered a period of social reorientation in which people start to explore novel social surroundings, expanding their relationships with peers and spending less time with parents (Larson et al., 1996). As adolescents become better able to understand the mental states of other people (Dumontheil et al., 2010), they become more concerned with what others think of them and are more likely to use these judgments to inform what they think of themselves (van der Aar, 2018). In parallel, many mental health issues have their onset in adolescence (Viner et al., 2012), which may in part be related to the changes in self and social cognitive processing that occur during this period (Choudhury, 2010). It has been proposed that adolescence is a sensitive period for sociocultural processing (Mills & Blakemore, 2014), and therefore social, cultural and environmental contextual factors may play an important role in the maturation of self and social cognitive processing, which may in turn become sources of risk or resilience to mental illnesses that have their onset during adolescence. This multidisciplinary PhD will integrate experimental tasks, questionnaires and methods to characterize environment-specific factors, in a new adolescent sample in the UK and existing longitudinal cohort data from cohorts in the UK and Spain to investigate the questions: How do sociocultural and environmental factors affect core self-evaluations of adolescents in the UK and Spain, and how are these sources of risk and resilience to mental health outcomes during adolescence?UK behavioural study. This study will investigate how social cohesion (e.g. social contacts and neighbourhood indicators of disadvantage) is related to changes in self and social processing, and how these might be sources of resilience to mental health outcomes. We will recruit around 300 participants ages 11 to 18 years in the UK and will use validated questionnaires and tasks to measure: peer relationships and connectedness to family, various mental health outcomes, core self-evaluations, self-descriptiveness and self-concept and perspective taking ability. We will also include objective sociodemographic measures (e.g. Index of Multiple Deprivation; IMD) as well as subjective measures (e.g. perceived relative socioeconomic status) and obtain measures of greenspace and air and noise pollution by relating participant postcodes to governmental area-level data.Cohort studies. We will investigate the relationship between environmental and sociodemographic factors and the development of mental health-related outcomes throughout adolescence, and how these are moderated by psychosocial factors. We will employ the Spanish INMA and the UK Understanding Society cohort studies, to explore how demographic measures of poverty, including parental education and area-level deprivation measures, and specific environmental factors, such as availability and use of greenspace, predict mental health outcomes. We will also investigate influences of social support and relationships and compare these across both cultures.Mixed effects models will investigate how sociocultural and environmental factors predict mental health difficulties, and how this relationship can be modulated by differences in socio-cognitive processing. We predict that objective and subjective indicators of disadvantage will have a detrimental effect on mental health, and that there will be a protective role of social relationships in this effect. This might be due to resilience related to more malleable and positive core self-concepts that might be induced by strong social relationships, as well as better perspective taking abilities. We also predict that there might be a protective role of peer and family support in this relationship, especially in cultures that emphasize the development of adolescents within the family structure (e.g. Spain).